Does Edmund Burke accept a universal moral order, or does his thought
rest on mere utilitarianism and subjectivistic ethics? In the final
chapter
of Natural Right and History, Leo Strauss suggests the latter.
Though
acknowledging many classical and Christian overtones in Burke's
political
writings, he argues that, at its core, Burke's thinking is profoundly
modern
and that it prepares the way for a morally relativistic historicism. In
support of this view, Strauss cites what to his mind is Burke's
excessive
depreciation of "reason or theory" in favor of concrete human
experience,
practice, and tradition.1

At first glance, says Strauss, Burke's emphasis on the
importance of
practical wisdom or prudence in the political sphere might appear to be
a return to the Aristotelian view—forgotten by modern natural-right
theorists
like Hobbes—"according to which theory cannot be the sole, or the
sufficient,
guide of practice." 2 But while
Aristotle
stresses the preeminence of theory as providing a conceptual model of
what
the best society ought to be like—a model which it is the duty of
legislators
using prudence to approximate as nearly as possible in given
circumstances—"Burke
asserts that theory . . . has essentially a tendency to mislead
practice." 3

Strauss explains that speculation or reason, "being
essentially 'private,'
is concerned with the truth without any regard to public opinion." 4
But for Burke, he continues, society rests

on consent. Yet the consent cannot be achieved by
reasoning
alone, and in particular not by the mere calculation of the advantages
of living together—a calculation which may be completed in a short span
of time—but solely by habits and prejudices which grow up only in long
periods. . .

The intrusion of theory into politics is liable to have an
unsettling
and inflaming effect. No actual social order is perfect. "Speculative
inquiries"
necessarily bring to light the imperfect character of the established
order.
If these inquiries are introduced into political discussion, which, of
necessity, lacks "the coolness of philosophic inquiry," they are liable
"to raise discontent in the people" in regard to the established order,
discontent which may make rational reform impossible. The most
legitimate
theoretical problems become, in the political arena, "vexatious
questions"
and cause "a spirit of litigation" and "fanaticism." Considerations
transcending
"the arguments of states and kingdoms" must be left "to the schools;
for
there only they may be discussed with safety." 5

Thus, Strauss concludes, Burke "parts company with the
Aristotelian tradition
by disparaging theory and especially metaphysics. He uses 'metaphysics'
and 'metaphysician' frequently in a derogatory sense." His "opposition
to modern 'rationalism' shifts almost insensibly into an opposition to
'rationalism' as such." 6

Strauss notes that a direct consequence of Burke's critique
of reason
is his rejection of the view that constitutions can be "made" by "a
wise
'legislator' or founder" based on the reasoned understanding of man's
"highest
end"—regarded by Strauss as the classical position—in favor of the view
that constitutions must "come into being . . . slowly, not to say
imperceptibly,
'in a great length of time, and by a great variety of accidents.' " 7
Related to this belief, Strauss contends, are tendencies on Burke's
part
to regard the common good as the product of accidental causation
without
benefit of specifically moral intentions; to accept evil fatalistically
in the face of apparently overwhelming historical trends; and to see
what
is "inherited"—or in Burke's case, the British constitution—as a
sufficient
standard of the good, rendering recourse to a higher standard
unnecessary. 8

According to Strauss, what later came to be called
"historical process"
was for Burke "still accidental causation or accidental causation
modified
by the prudential handling of situations as they arose." Burke, he
writes,
saw the sound political order as "the unintended outcome of accidental
causation. He applied to the production of the sound political order
what
modern economy had taught about the production of public prosperity:
the
common good is the product of activities which are not by themselves
ordered
to the common good. Burke accepted the principle of modern political
economy
which is diametrically opposed to the classical principle: 'the love of
lucre', 'this natural, this reasonable . . . principle', 'is the grand
cause of prosperity to all states.' " 9

Strauss sees in Burke the beginnings of a secularized
version of the
traditional belief in Providence. "It almost goes without saying," he
writes,
"that Burke regards the connection between 'the love of lucre' and
prosperity,
on the one hand, and 'a great variety of accidents' and a healthy
political
order, on the other, as part of the providential order. . . ," 10
The theological tradition recognized that God's ways are mysterious,
says
Strauss, and therefore held "that man cannot take his bearings by God's
providence but only by God's law, which simply forbids men to do evil."
But Burke, he contends, "comes close to suggesting that to oppose a
thoroughly
evil current in human affairs is perverse if that current is
sufficiently
powerful; he is oblivious of the nobility of last-ditch resistance." 11
Moreover, Strauss continues, while "political theory had been from its
inception the quest for civil society as it ought to be," Burke's
"political
theory is, or tends to become, identical with a theory of the British
constitution,
i.e., an attempt to 'discover the latent wisdom which prevails' in the
actual." Citing Burke's emphasis on the prescriptive nature of that
constitution,
Strauss argues: "Prescription cannot be the sole authority for a
constitution,
and therefore recourse to rights anterior to the constitution, i.e., to
natural rights, cannot be superfluous unless prescription itself is a
sufficient
guaranty of goodness. Transcendent standards can be dispensed with if
the
standard is inherent in the process; 'the actual and the present is the
rational.' " Thus, he concludes, Burke's thinking is a major step
toward
the historical relativism of Hegel. 12

Strauss is by no means alone in this assessment. Others
expressing similar
interpretations include Harold J. Laski and Lee Cameron McDonald. Laski
sees Burke as, at bottom "a utilitarian who was convinced that what was
old was valuable by the mere fact of its arrival at maturity." 13
He adds that Burke's was essentially a "monistic view of society" which
"maintained the inherent rightness of the existing order." 14
Similarly, McDonald sees Burke as accepting the "English Constitution"
as the ultimate measure of political wisdom while being "too
anti-philosophical"
to be consciously aware of his own "historical relativism." While Burke
often appealed in defense of his various policies to concepts such as
"moral
law" or "experience," writes McDonald, in "all these cases what he was
really appealing to was what we all know deep down to be right because
we are, after all, Englishmen. In the case of Irishmen, Americans,
Indians,
and Frenchmen, they were judged as if they were Englishmen. . . . 15

But such interpretations fail to do justice to the
complexity of Burke's
position. If it were true, as these authors contend, that Burke was an
historical relativist for whom the prescriptive rights of Englishmen
provided
the ultimate ethical standard, then it seems that one of two things
would
have to follow: Either he would (consciously or unconsciously) equate
the
British constitution with a universal standard of right, in which event
he would insist that the details of that constitution should everywhere
apply, or else he would view morality as being merely conventional, in
which case he would see the moral obligation as differing according to
time and place. In fact Burke did neither.

While Burke's fulsome praise for the British constitution in
the Reflections
is often taken as showing an overly exalted view of the existing order,
it is important to remember his purpose on that occasion. He was
upholding
British institutions not as perfect in the abstract but as vastly
preferable
to the approach taken by the French revolutionaries—an approach then
being
vigorously touted by Dr. Richard Price and others for possible
emulation
in England. 16 Burke explicitly
stated,
moreover—and a careful reading of the Reflections bears him
out—that,
in praising the British constitution, he "did not mean that its
exterior
form and positive arrangement should become a model for. . . [France],
or for any people servilely to copy." 17

Burke believed strongly that political constitutions and the
details
of government should differ in accordance with the "character and
circumstances"
of various peoples. 18 But he
also
affirmed that the "principles of true politics are those of morality
enlarged" 19
and that these principles are the same throughout the world. When the
defense
in the impeachment trial of Warren Hastings, governor-general of
Bengal,
argued that "the exercise of arbitrary power" was the historical norm
in
India and that the moral imperative did not hold with the same force
there,
Burke thundered in reply:

This geographical morality we do protest against. .
. . We
think it necessary . . . to declare that the laws of morality are the
same
everywhere, and that there is no action which would pass for an act of
extortion, of peculation, of bribery, and of oppression in England,
that
is not an act of extortion, of peculation, of bribery, and oppression
in
Europe, Asia, Africa, and all the world over. This I contend for not in
the technical form of it, but I contend for it in the substance. 20

As he opposed the notion of a "geographical" morality, so, too, did
Burke
denounce the idea that man's moral duty changes with the passage of
time.
"We know that we have made no discoveries," he writes, "and we think
that
no discoveries are to be made, in morality; nor many in the great
principles
of government, nor in the ideas of liberty, which were understood long
before we were born, altogether as well as they will be after the grave
has heaped its mould upon our presumption, and the silent tomb shall
have
imposed its law on our pert loquacity." 21

For Burke, the moral obligation is "eternal"; it provides
the basis
of all community; and it has its source in the will of God. 22
Hence, all "persons possessing any portion of power ought to be
strongly
and awefully impressed with an idea that they act in trust; and that
they
are to account for their conduct in that trust to the one great master,
author and founder of society." 23

Such examples could be multiplied almost endlessly. A deep
awareness
of a universal moral order having its source in God's will pervades
Burke's
writings. Whatever the issue at hand, Burke constantly repairs in one
way
or another to the theme that all "human laws are, properly speaking,
only
declaratory; they may alter the mode and application, but have no power
over the substance of original justice." 24

How, then, to explain, in the face of such evidence to the
contrary,
the widely held view that Burke was in significant ways a moral
relativist?
An answer may be found in the fact that, while Burke placed great
importance
on the historical nature of human existence, the possibility of an
historicism
that accepts a universal moral order is widely overlooked. 25
In the remaining pages, which will rely heavily on the work of Irving
Babbitt
and Claes Ryn, I intend to argue that Burke was gravitating toward such
a "value-centered historicism." 26
In addition, I hope to show that a key ingredient in Burke's thought is
his tendency to conceive of morality in terms of practical action—i.e.,
in terms of will—rather than reason, and, finally, to reconsider in
this
light some of the points made by Strauss.

We have seen that Strauss, in line with older Western
thought, tends
to associate the moral order with norms of conduct or "general
principles"
accessible to reason, which it is the duty of statesmen and indeed all
men to imitate in the practical realm. He sees such terms as "prudence"
or "practical wisdom" in Burke as connoting mere economic efficiency or
utility unordered by principles of natural right, which are accessible
only to reason or theory. It is for this reason that Strauss concludes
from Burke's elevation of practice over theory that, for Burke, the
common
good results in some way from actions not motivated by moral intent. 27

From the way Burke uses "prudence" or "practical wisdom,"
however, it
becomes apparent that he does not assume, as does Aristotle, a sharp
break
between the realm of action and the realm of the universal or the good.
Rather, prudence itself (also "practical wisdom," "practical science,"
"political reason," which are used interchangeably) has a moral
dimension. 28
And this moral dimension, according to Burke, is not to be found in
rigid
adherence to preconceived rules but in a sense of high purpose, or will,
that accords with the "permanent part" of man's nature. 29

Traditional natural-law thinkers who are accustomed to
associating the
moral imperative with rules or precepts of reason often see a conflict,
as Ryn points out,30 between
stressing
the ultimacy of will and accepting a universal moral order. Heinrich
Rommen
writes, for example, that to assert the superiority of will over
intellect
"means relativism in ethics. . . . It means positivism in
jurisprudence,
non-morality in politics, denial of the natural rights of men, and the
acceptance of absolute power of the state. It leaves no alternative but
to profess that might is right." 31

But this ignores the distinction, long recognized by
Christianity and
other religions, between different qualities of will. Irving Babbitt
has
described the existence within the human breast of two competing
elements
of will: the lower will, which is manifested in the expansive desires,
and the higher will, which is experienced as a propensity to put a
check
on those desires in favor of a unifying and more deeply satisfying goal.32

Commenting on Babbitt's work, Ryn notes that the higher will
itself—and
not some preexisting set of rules discovered by reason—is the ultimate
"moral imperative at the center of [man's] awareness in terms of which
everything is finally evaluated." The higher will, says Ryn, "is in one
sense particular and mutable; it is experienced by individual men and
has
an effect in the unique circumstances of their lives. But this
will
is also the same in all men; it is universal and immutable in that it
pulls
all in the same direction, towards the special quality of life which is
its own reward by satisfying man's deepest yearning." 33
The ethical will is experienced as a negative in that it is felt as an
"inner check" or restraint on man's merely selfish impulses. Yet,
paradoxically,
it is simultaneously experienced in a profoundly positive way as the
potentiality
of a truly meaningful existence: the source of true happiness and
genuine
community. "To the extent," Ryn explains, "that man acts from within
that
special will and thus disciplines opposing inclinations, he unifies his
personality and tends to move into communion with others who are
similarly
motivated." Conversely, the "effect of indulging the selfish will is
deepening
disharmony and isolation from others." 34

Despite intermittent lapses by Burke into the older
rationalist terminology,
it is nonetheless true that he ultimately associates the moral
imperative
with what Babbitt later called the higher will, rather than with
abstract
laws or precepts of reason. In matters of morality and politics,
virtuous
habits and noble character clearly count for more to Burke than
brilliance
of intellect. 35 He frequently
differentiates
between men's "true rights" or their "interest," on the one hand, and
their
"occasional" or "selfish" will, on the other. The people have a right
to
expect of their leaders "an entire devotion to their interest," he
writes,
"but an abject submission to their occasional will" would extinguish in
governmental officials "all moral principle, all sense of dignity, all
use of judgment, and all consistency of character. . . . For power to
be
legitimate, it must be exercised not according to the people's "sordid
selfish interest, nor to their wanton caprice, nor to their arbitrary
will,"
but according to "that eternal immutable law, in which will and reason
are the same." 36

A key difference between Burke and older natural-law
thinkers such as
Thomas Aquinas can be seen in Burke's understanding of the role played
by laws and rules of conduct. Burke sees the establishment of good laws
as crucial to civilized society. Indeed, society cannot exist if the
law
is not respected. But unlike those traditional natural-law thinkers who
viewed the universal moral order as actually inhering in general laws
or
principles of behavior, Burke regards legal codes as means to a higher
end. Civil society, he writes, "is an institution of beneficence; and
law
itself is only beneficence acting by a rule." 37
Laws, then, are instrumental: Their purpose is to help men to achieve
"beneficence"
or, as Burke puts it a sentence later, "justice." And as the
requirements
of justice change with circumstances, the laws should also vary. They
are
not abstract and immutable, he tells us, but matters of "convention."
This
does not mean, however, that legislators or voters in democracies are
free
to act at whim. Morality is not merely subjective. Rather, men must
actively
seek the just solution in the circumstances: the solution that accords
with man's "permanent" nature. 38
While everything else changes, says Burke, this obligation never
changes.
"My Lords," he declared as the Hastings trial drew to its close,

it has pleased Providence to place us in such a
state, that
we appear every moment to be on the verge of some great mutations.
There
is one thing, and one thing only, which defies all mutation; that which
existed before the world, and will survive the fabrick of the world
itself;
I mean justice; that justice, which, emanating from the Divinity, has a
place in the breast of every one of us, given us for our guide with
regard
to ourselves and with regard to others, and which will stand, after
this
globe is burned to ashes, our advocate or our accuser before the great
Judge, when He comes to call upon us for the tenour of a well-spent
life.
. . . 39

The importance Burke places on tradition, prescription and sound
prejudice
is analogous in many ways to the importance he places on legal
enactments:
All provide indispensable support to man's higher disposition in its
continual
struggle against contrary inclinations. Tradition for Burke is the
summing
up in concrete experience of innumerable attempts by men to embody the
good in particular circumstances. As such, it offers to the imagination
a valuable source of inspiration for new acts of morality. "Always
acting
as if in the presence of canonized forefathers," Burke explains in the Reflections,
"the spirit of freedom, leading in itself to misrule and excess, is
tempered
with an awful gravity.40 On the
other
hand, the partial manifestation of the good in tradition never
completely
exhausts the good in its full transcendence. Hence, no
tradition—British
or otherwise—provides for Burke a complete model of the good to be
slavishly
imitated without regard to circumstances. By "following wise examples
you
would have given new examples of wisdom to the world," he says
of
the French revolutionaries. 41

Strauss suggests that Burke abandoned the ancient "quest for
civil society
as it ought to be" in favor of a too-ready acceptance of the existing
as
good. Actually, Burke was too keenly aware of the infinite complexity
of
human existence for him passively to accept any preconceived
set
of behavioral norms (whatever their source) as adequately reflecting
man's
ethical duty. For Burke, man's ethical imperative is an active power.
It
requires the creative ordering of particular circumstances with
reference
to man's ultimate purpose—a purpose emanating from the Divine will. And
as circumstances are constantly changing, man is forever faced with the
necessity of making new moral choices—but always with a view to the one
unchanging end, which is the transcendent good for all. It is this that
Burke probably had in mind when he described himself near the end of
the Reflections
as a person "who would preserve consistency by varying his means to
secure
the unity of his end." 42

In Burke's view, "civil society as it ought to be" is one
that restrains
man's arbitrary impulses while at the same time allowing the higher
will
as much freedom of action as possible. But since the proper balance
depends
upon the (ever changing) "character and circumstances" of the people to
be governed, the "quest" is an eminently practical one. One of the
major
needs of men which it is the office of government to provide, says
Burke,
is "a sufficient restraint upon their passions." "In this sense," he
adds,
"the restraints on men, as well as their liberties, are to be reckoned
among their rights. But as the liberties and restrictions vary with
times
and circumstances, and admit of infinite modifications, they cannot be
settled upon any abstract rule; and nothing is so foolish as to discuss
them on that principle." 43

In Burke's eyes, then, the "quest for government as it ought
to be"
requires not abstract speculation but "a deep knowledge of human nature
and human necessities, and of the things which facilitate or obstruct
the
various ends which are to be pursued by the mechanism of civil
institutions." 44
In other words, it requires both philosophic and pragmatic knowledge of
tremendous proportions; and since mistakes could have disastrous
effects,
not mere utility but morality itself dictates caution and proper
intellectual
humility. "If circumspection and caution are a part of wisdom, when we
work only upon inanimate matter," writes Burke, "surely they become a
part
of duty too, when the subject of our demolition and construction is not
brick and timber, but sentient beings, by the sudden alteration of
whose
state, condition, and habits, multitudes may be rendered miserable." 45
"The true lawgiver," he continues,

ought to have an heart full of sensibility. He
ought to love
and respect his kind, and to fear himself. It may be allowed to his
temperament
to catch his ultimate object with an intuitive glance; but his
movements
towards it ought to be deliberate. Political arrangement, as it is a
work
for social ends, is to be only wrought by social means. There mind must
conspire with mind. Time is required to produce that union of minds
which
alone can produce all the good we aim at. 46

According to Burke, "True humility, the basis of the Christian system,
is the low, but deep and firm, foundation of all real virtue." 47
And among the most important forms of humility, he said many times, is
humility of intellect—"a strong impression of the ignorance and
fallibility
of mankind." 48 Hence, says
Burke,
good statesmen, giving proper regard to their own fallibility, will
proceed
slowly in the task of constitution-building—step by step, using trial
and
error over scores of years and even centuries—so that the resulting
civilization
could not have been foreseen in its fullness by any of the generations
whose efforts helped to build it. It is in this sense that Burke
praised
the British constitution as having come into existence "in a great
length
of time, and by a great variety of accidents." 49
In referring to "accidents," however, he clearly did not mean that the
constitution was good because the product of actions not guided by
moral
intent. On the contrary, as we have seen, Burke viewed the British
constitution
as good precisely to the extent that it had resulted from innumerable
moral
actions, each participating in the universal good but in different
circumstances.
At the same time, he realized full well that many other actions not
ethically
motivated had also gone into the making of his and all societies, and
that
even such good as men had been able painstakingly to build into
civilization
over millennia was constantly threatened by man's lower nature. Given
the
perennial tug-of-war between the lower and higher wills which defines
the
human condition, society short of the eschaton will always be
imperfect,
embodying the universal good in some of its aspects but never
completely.

The mark of a good statesman, according to Burke, is "a
disposition
to preserve" what is good in the existing order, combined with "an
ability
to improve" it. 50 In this
practical
way, the ancient "quest for society as it ought to be" continues even
to
the end of time.

Notes

1. Leo Strauss, Natural Right and History
(Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1953), pp. 300-314. [Back]

9. Ibid., pp. 314-15. It should he
noted here
that, while Burke recognized the motivating force of self-interest in
economic
affairs, he did not believe the "love of lucre" alone was sufficient to
produce prosperity or good of any other kind. On the contrary, he
frequently
refers to the subordinate place in the moral order held by the merely
economic,
and condemns economic practices that are not ordered to moral ends. One
of Burke's major complaints against Hastings and the East India
Company,
for instance, was the company's ruthless economic exploitation of
India.
See Russell Kirk, Edmund Burke: A Genius Reconsidered (New
Rochelle,
N.Y.: Arlington House, 1967), pp. 109-111. Also see Edmund Burke, Reflections
on the Revolution In France, ed. Conor Cruise O'Brien
(Harmondsworth:
Penguin Books, 1969), pp. 173-74, 194-95, 3O6-l3. [Back]

11. Ibid., pp. 317-18. Strauss
bases this criticism
on the final paragraph of Burke's Thoughts on French Affairs.
"If
a great change is to be made in human affairs," Burke wrote, "the minds
of men will be fitted to it, the general opinions and feelings will
draw
that way. Every fear, every hope, will forward it; and then they, who
persist
in opposing this mighty current in human affairs, will appear rather to
resist the desires of Providence itself, than the mere designs of men.
They will not be resolute and firm, but perverse and obstinate.''
Strauss
interprets this as meaning that Burke thought the victory of the French
revolution might have been decreed by Providence and that, assuming
that
were so, it would be "perverse'' to oppose it, no matter how evil it
might
be. But as Russell Kirk points out, Burke was not hinting "that perhaps
the champions of religion and of things established ought to let
themselves
be swept away by the current of the French Revolution. On the contrary,
he says that effectual opposition to the Revolution must be the work of
many people, acting together intelligently. . . . The 'mighty current'
for which he hopes is an awakening of the men with 'power, wisdom, and
information' to the peril of the Revolution. . . ." See Russell Kirk,
"Three
Pillars of Order: Edmund Burke, Samuel Johnson, Adam Smith,'' Modern
Age, XXV (Summer 1981), 228. Significantly, Burke's actual
conduct—which
he insisted was the best test of a man's principles—is in direct
contradict
ion to Strauss's interpretation. As Kirk notes (''Three Pillars of
Order,''
p. 228): "Of all the men of his time, Burke was the most vehemently
opposed
to any compromise with Jacobinism. He would have chosen the guillotine
rather than submission—or, as he put it, death with the sword in hand.
He broke with friends and party, sacrificing reputation and risking
bankruptcy,
rather than countenance the least concession to the 'peace' faction in
England.'' [Back]

27. Compare Strauss's assertion that
"skepticism in
regard to theoretical metaphysics . . . culminated in the depreciation
of theory in favor of practice" and that this brought "into being a new
type of theory, of metaphysics, having as its highest theme human
action
and its product rather than the whole [i.e., the transcendent good],
which
is in no way the object of human action" (Natural Right and History),
p. 320, with Aristotle's description of wisdom (sophia) as "most
precious for it is extraordinary that anyone should regard political
science
or prudence as most important, unless man is the highest being in the
world,"
(Nicomachean Ethics, trans. J. A. K. Thomson [revised ed.,
Harmonsworth:
Penguin Books, 1976], Bk. VI, Ch. VII, p. 212.) [Back]

34. Ibid. For a more extensive
discussion of
the moral imperative as will, see Claes G. Ryn, Democracy and the
Ethical
Life Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1978), esp.
Part
Two. [Back]

35. Burke writes (Letter to [William
Markham],
Letters, p. 131) that, "when your lordship speaks of tests of
public
principles, there is one which you have not mentioned, but which, let
me
say, is far above them all,—the actions and conduct of men. Let mine,
and
those of my friends, speak for our public principles." [Back]

38. "Lawyers . . . have their strict rule
to go by,"
Burke writes (Sheriffs of Bristol, Works, II, p.7). "But
legislators ought to do what lawyers cannot; for they have no other
rules
to bind them, but the great principles of reason and equity, and the
general
sense of mankind. These they are bound to obey and follow; and rather
to
enlarge and enlighten law by the liberality of legislative reason, than
to fetter and bind their higher capacity by the narrow constructions of
subordinate, artificial justice." [Back]

48. Burke, Reflections, p. 376.
Referring to
the French revolutionaries' lack of appreciation for the good examples
of the past, Burke notes (Of the National Assembly, Works,
II, p. 553) that "a certain intemperance of intellect is the disease of
the time, and the source of all its other diseases." [Back]